Camden Council achieves a truly data-driven, citizen-first borough

Camden Council first began working with Qlik in 2012, believing the business intelligence specialist could help to facilitate its five-year digital transformation plan. This involved driving significant cost savings, increasing efficiencies and reimagining data usage to enhance the day-to-day lives of over 240,000 residents and the millions of visitors who pass through Camden.

Today, QlikView and Qlik Sense business analytics are used by managers, staff and services in over 65 dashboard areas within the council. As well as allowing for more informed decision making, these applications have enabled the delivery of a Medium Term Financial Strategy that supported the council in achieving over ?63 million savings between 2014 and 2017.

During the initial deployment and implementation of Qlik, the Council incorporated datasets gathered from different service points to achieve a 360° view of its operations and service-users’ needs. This strategy has enabled the Council to let data drive its operational and commercial decisions and fit services to the needs of residents, while enhancing accountability and transparency. The deployment of QlikView and Qlik Sense has allowed for an outcomes based approach to services, helping to track interventions and determine the future results of services provided.

Greater streamlining and improved experiences in areas such as parking management, adult social care, benefit provision and council tax administration have made a positive impact on everyday services for users. By slicing and comparing datasets across service areas, emerging patterns and problems are identified and addressed quickly. For instance, Camden is using dashboards within housing repairs services to manage operational processes. It can also measure officer performance using a single version of the truth approach, which has led to increased efficiency and customer satisfaction. Similarly, a cross-reference of census data with council data has been applied to plan school places in the context of a growing population.

Qlik’s input has extended to supporting Camden Council in promoting local government innovation. In line with the local government transparency code of 2015, Camden has led the way in making more data available to the public for the benefit of businesses and the community alike through an Open Data platform. Daily updates from dozens of datasets are accessible to the community on its website. Furthermore, Camden is working with other London boroughs to share data and insights and cooperate on service provision. Under the umbrella of the Smart London Board and initiatives such as the London Office of Technology and Innovation, Camden Council has also benefited from data sharing and cooperation with SMEs, coders and researchers to develop applications and services, including bespoke planning alerts.

The partnership with Qlik is enabling different ways of working and has seen Camden Council undergo a cultural change, evolving from a cluster of siloed departments to a whole system approach to services across the organisation. With data at their fingertips, staff now spend less time on processing queries, and more time focussing on delivering solutions to service-users. Camden Council has seen a 45 percent saving in working hours in some areas (for e.g. using open data sets to answer freedom of information requests) as a result.

Sudip Trivedi, Head of Data & Analytics and Connectivity, Business Partner, London Borough of Camden, says, “We are delighted with the results of our partnership with Qlik. While the cost-savings and improvements in efficiencies speak for themselves, the concept proposed by Qlik has proved effective beyond our expectation and their offering has developed to cater for our needs on every front."

“In a wider sense, our transition to a data-centric organisation has been so successful that we no longer differentiate between our digital and operational strategies. Our ongoing focus is now on a building blocks approach to generating and applying better quality data. We believe that the successes we have had in Camden through data integration and sharing with other boroughs should become the template for a wider approach.”

Sean Price, EMEA Industry Solutions Director, Public Sector, Qlik, comments: “The success of our work with Camden Council is a great example of the transformative impact data analytics can have in the public sector. Data has almost limitless problem-solving capabilities and our work with them has really highlighted how it can make significant cost savings and improve the day-to-day lives of everyday people. There is much that other authorities and organisations can learn from the success in Camden.”